Uchenna Awoke is a writer from Nsukka, Nigeria. His short stories have appeared in Transition, Elsewhere Lit, Trestle Ties, Oyster River Pages, Evergreen, the Arkansas International and other publications. He has received fellowships from MacDowell and the Vermont studio Center. He is an Artist Protection Fund/inaugural Arkansas International Writer-at-Risk Residency Fellow. He is currently a grad student at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Iowa City, IA USA. He was also a 2019 Graywolf African Fiction Prize finalist. The Liquid Eye of a Moon is his debut novel. His second novel A Siege of Owls is forthcoming in Catapult US in the summer of 2026.

Fifteen-year-old Dimkpa dreams of the day his father will be made village head. He will return to school and maybe even go on to university; his mother will no longer have to break her back foraging wild food to sell at market; they will have the money to build a fine tomb for his aunt Okike; and his family’s status as ohu ma, the lowest Igbo caste, won’t matter anymore. But when his father is passed over for a younger man, breaking tradition, Dimkpa realizes that he must make his own fate...